Originally posted by OffTargetThrows:
Truly laughable statement. We won the DET game despite Alex's accuracy.
Its obvious you just want a reaction. Alex's inaccuracy led to drops but it also led to the game winning TD, thats not one of those "in spite" of moments... had we just ran and ran never needing the 4th down play from him then you could argue that statement, but in the end Alex stepped up and delivered a great ball, followed by a great catch and great effort to get accross the goal line... end of story.
Detroit is a perfect example of one of the watershed games for Alex. Lineman misses a block, followed by penalties, followed by a inaccurate pass, then his receivers start dropping perfectly catchable balls... next thing you know Alex starts trying too hard and overthrows everything in sight. But to start the game Alex was actually pretty accurate, his receivers and RB's dropped some pretty easy catches. Then Mr. Tries-to-hard appears and he puts way too much on all his throws and loses most of his touch. If his receivers can start making the catches they are supposed to make early in the game to sustain drives, there will be allot more games like Tampa and allot less like Detroit.
Without typing too much 3 specific plays pop into my head that would have bailed Alex out and kept him from reverting to his old self. There was a check down to Gore that hit him in the numbers with room to run, dropped. The DW TD drop where he had his hands turned over the wrong way. Among a couple others, one play that would have been a great play had Crabtree been able to make it was the double tap... Crabtree was focusing on the pylon & TD but instead of posting up on his left leg (which caused the double tap) had he just fallen to the ground and focused on tapping his right foot inbounds... the ball is at the 1 yard line. Now Crabtree was off balance and I forget the down and distance so it may have still been a FG attempt, but players need to do a better job of securing the yards before going for the TD. At times, the offense as a whole seemed to revert to last years mentality of "gotta make a big play" rather than taking the yards the defense gave them.
...people look at the stat lines and don't see what CJ did to make Stafford look good. The guy makes adjustments on balls that are in his area and not perfectly placed. Something our WRs need to get better at. He is also tough to take down after he makes the catch and usually gets about 5 extra yards or breaks it for a big gain. Stop looking at the stats and look at how much help he gets from his elite WR!